


An Orange on the Seder Plate

by firstlovelatespring



Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming of Age, Drinking Games, F/F, F/M, Judaism, M/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstlovelatespring/pseuds/firstlovelatespring
Summary: No one’s ever told her not to kiss girls; not in so many words, anyway, but she can hear it all the same. If not from her parents, from her teachers and from the kids at St. Damascus. The lesbians from her synagogue seem happy enough, but they don’t have to go to Catholic school for the next seven years.Chloe comes of age.





	An Orange on the Seder Plate

**Author's Note:**

> For the optimal reading experience, listen [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VrAcqiGIjKShIjumLSt0w).
> 
> Thank you to [eldanado](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eldanado) and [unbelieve](http://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelieve) for looking this over! The title is in reference to a custom introduced by [Susannah Heschel](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/an-orange-on-the-seder-plate/).

Chloe and Jenna have been best friends since 4th grade. Chloe’s mom went to Harvard with Jenna’s parents, and they kept in touch. When the Hawthornes moved to Bellevue, the Lymans followed. Mrs. Hawthorne got Chloe into St. Damascus Elementary; Chloe’s parents are why Jenna has vegetables from the organic co-op in her lunch box. They have sleepovers and family dinners and joint family vacations, and Jenna even comes with Chloe and her mom to Shabbat services a couple times a month. The old ladies there like to say they’re joined at the hip.

They’re eleven now, practically teenagers, so Chloe’s mom gives them her old gossip magazines to look through. It’s Saturday night and they’re sprawled on Chloe’s bedroom floor in pink and purple matching pajamas doing just that.

Chloe is reading a full page spread of the  _ High School Musical 3 _ cast. She stares wide-eyed at a photo of Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron. “He’s so dreamy,” she says.

“Ew, boys,” Jenna says, sticking out her tongue.

Chloe laughs. Jenna’s always acting like boys have cooties or something. Chloe was the same, until they turned ten. Now she has a full-blown crush on Troy Bolton.

“How come you’re never crushing on anyone?” Chloe asks, setting down the magazine.

Jenna squirms on the floor, fixing the sleeves on her pajama top. She looks at the magazines, at the floor, at her own hands, and then meets Chloe’s gaze. “I am. Just not crushing on… boys.”

Chloe considers. She looks down at Ashley Tisdale, and then back up at Jenna. “Okay.”

Jenna smiles. They go back to flipping through the magazines, but now Chloe’s looking at the photos differently. Seeing them in a different light. She’s always liked looking at pictures of pretty girls; didn’t everyone? Could she be crushing on someone other than boys, too? There are two women who sit behind them in shul every week that are always holding hands, and they seem alright. Chloe’s mom whispers one night that they’re “lesbians,” but other than that no one at the temple has said anything. 

Chloe stops on a paparazzi photo of Justin Bieber kissing a girl outside some club. It’s not so much that she doesn’t know the answer, factually, but that it feels like the thing to do. The words feel dense on her tongue, but Chloe asks Jenna, “Can two girls do that?”

“Yeah, dummy,” Jenna says, rolling her eyes in the way that Chloe’s mom says will make them get stuck like that.

Chloe rolls her eyes back, and then elbows Jenna for good measure. Jenna elbows back. Chloe has no choice but to tackle her.

They’re best friends. They’ve shared a bed, even a sleeping bag, shared a seatbelt in the car when all Chloe’s cousins were piled in. Chloe has been inches away from Jenna dozens, if not hundreds, of times before, but this time feels different. They’ve reached a stalemate, both breathing hard from play-fighting on Chloe’s floor, and Chloe does it, quick, before she loses her nerve. She kisses Jenna right on the lips.

Jenna smiles, so Chloe kisses her again. It’s just like she’s seen her parents do a million times, a quick kiss before leaving for work in the morning, no big deal. Except Jenna is looking her like, like. Like something Chloe doesn’t know how to describe. She feels suddenly terrible, like she’s nine again and has to call her mom to pick her up from a sleepover halfway through the night. Anxious and overwhelmed in a way she can’t quite place, and embarrassed to be feeling anything at all.

“Tell my mom you’re not feeling well.”

“What?”

“You have to go home.”

Only when Jenna is away in the car with Chloe’s mom does Chloe identify the feeling as guilt. No one’s ever told her not to kiss girls; not in so many words, anyway, but she can hear it all the same. If not from her parents, from her teachers and from the kids at St. Damascus. The lesbians from her synagogue seem happy enough, but they don’t have to go to Catholic school for the next seven years.

Chloe goes over to Jenna’s house for dinner next Saturday like she does every Saturday. Usually the night ends with both girls begging for Chloe to be allowed to stay over, and the parents give in without too much of a fight. But this time, Chloe doesn’t ask. She presses her face to the backseat window on the car ride home and doesn’t think about everything that looking at Jenna makes her feel. It just… hurts. It’s too much.

There’s still soccer practice, swim lessons, bumping into each other at the supermarket. They’re polite enough in front of their parents, but it’s not the same. Chloe feels bad every time they run into each other, knowing that this awkwardness is all her fault. She misses her best friend, but not enough to try and fix things.

“How come Jenna doesn’t come over any more?” Chloe’s mom asks one night while they’re making dinner. “Did you two have a fight?”

Chloe frowns at the cutting board, pretending that chopping celery needs her full attention. “I don’t know.”

Her mom looks up from the stove, and Chloe can tell she sees straight through her. But she just says, “I guess people just drift apart,” and goes back to cooking.

Next year is middle school, and they just keep drifting. Jenna sits at lunch with the popular girls and starts wearing makeup and exposed candy-colored bra straps and short skirts. Chloe sits at a corner table with Kevin McClain and Tanner Bassett. It’s not bad, she knows. Just different. She doesn’t forget what happened with Jenna, but it takes up different headspace.

* * *

When Chloe is twelve, she stops complaining about Hebrew school. This is also, incidentally, the year that Audrey Levy joins her class. Audrey has dark brown hair and warm brown skin and at least two inches on Chloe. Her mom’s Jewish too, and Chloe spends class time trying to count the freckles on the back of her neck instead of learning her  _ haftorah _ portion. Audrey is bold and loud and not afraid to say exactly what she’s thinking.

Aaron Feldman is the first in their class to have his bar mitzvah. Only a few of them are invited to the party, but his parents have a Kiddush luncheon right after the service, and nearly the whole class stays for the bagels. Audrey does.

Chloe gets a sesame bagel and cream cheese and sits down against the wall in the corner of the room. She watches Audrey and some other kids talk to the cantor for a while, and then takes out her iPhone - an early 13th birthday gift from her parents. She opens Angry Birds; she and Kevin beat almost all the levels on her iPod touch, but nothing transferred over to her new phone. It’s fun go through them again, see how her approach and bird-flinging abilities have evolved since then.

Audrey sits down next to her. “What’re you up to?” she says. Her shoulder bumps up against Chloe’s, and her hair smells like strawberries.

There’s a lie about texting her mom on the tip of Chloe’s tongue, but she swallows it. “Playing Angry Birds,” she says. And then, before she can change her mind, “Do you want to play?”

When Chloe and Kevin would play at school, it was very strictly one at a time, kibitzing permitted (and encouraged) but absolutely no launching while the other person had the iPod. There is no such rule with Audrey. Chloe holds the phone Audrey makes most of the moves, leaning into Chloe’s space. They don’t make it past more than a few levels in half an hour, but Chloe doesn’t mind in the slightest.

Audrey scooches closer to Chloe to get a better angle for the game, hair brushing against her shoulder, and Chloe has a moment of doubt. She likes Audrey, really likes her, and doesn’t want to mess things up. But Chloe thinks it’s like playing through Angry Birds again. This time, she doesn’t have to make the same mistakes.

Chloe asks Audrey to a movie over A.I.M., and her mom drives her to the theater to meet her “friend.” They share popcorn and brush arms six times and afterwards Chloe doesn’t even remember what villain Spider-Man fights.

After Chloe’s bat mitzvah, her mom stops making them go to shul every week, and Audrey goes to a different school than Chloe, so they don’t really see each other much. They go on one more date, and that’s it. Audrey breaks up with her over A.I.M. too.

Chloe doesn’t tell her mom about the breakup. She’s not afraid to, but she doesn’t. She wants, absurdly, to talk to Jenna about it. A couple times in the cafeteria Chloe actually considers going over to sit with her, but Jenna is always surrounded by her cool friends, probably talking about cool stuff like mascara and the newest episode of Pretty Little Liars. Even if she wanted to make things right now, Jenna doesn’t need her. Besides, Chloe has Tanner and Kevin to sit with. She doesn’t tell them either, but one day at lunch Tanner tries to teach Kevin to burp the ABCs and Chloe laughs so hard milk comes out of her nose. 

Chloe gets over it.

* * *

The Horsehead Collective is on the up and up. Chloe’s been messing around on her sister’s old keyboard to put together some chords underneath the techno stuff, and she’s planning on asking for a real microphone for her birthday so the Collective can properly bring in her vocals. They have three bar mitzvahs booked this month alone.

That Saturday, they absolutely kill it at Avery Bluestein’s space-themed bar mitzvah. There are paper-mâché stars and planets hanging from the ceiling of the venue, and black velvet draped over all the tables and the walls. They mostly play mid-2000s pop songs that make Kevin cringe, but there’s time for a few Horsehead Collective originals.

Chloe’s spent most of the day on stage in a horse head, but towards the end of the party she goes to the bar to order a mocktail. A lot of the guests have left already, although the dance floor is still crowded with preteens and older relatives fill half the tables. Chloe doesn’t even notice until she’s on her way back, Shirley Temple in hand, that Audrey is here. She’s sitting at a table with her mom and a boy Chloe doesn’t recognize. They’re probably too wrapped up in conversation to notice her, but Chloe rushes back to the stage.

“What’s up?” Tanner says from inside his horse head. It’s pretty muffled, but she has a lot of practice listening to him speak through the rubber. “Your face is all red.”

“I saw, uh...” Chloe’s cheek is hot to the touch.

Kevin looks up from his laptop. “Chloe, do you find yourself infatuated with a member of the male sex?”

Chloe laughs. “No, I actually saw an ex.”

“Who is he?” Tanner says, scanning the room. “You never mentioned any boyfriend.”

Chloe takes a deep breath. The contract Kevin had her sign before joining the Horsehead Collective had clauses on secrecy and loyalty—they didn’t mention anything specific about Chloe maybe liking girls, but she’s pretty sure it would be covered. Besides, Kevin and Tanner are her best friends. She has no logical reason to be nervous, but she is.   

“Audrey,” Chloe says, exhaling mightily, “is at the Mars table in the blue dress.”

Kevin cranes his neck to look at her, and Chloe smacks him on the shoulder. “Don’t be so obvious about it!”

“She’s pretty,” Tanner says, and Chloe loves him for that.

“I suppose she is.” Kevin puts his hand to his chin and considers. At least he’s not staring anymore. “If you’re into Ke$ha instead of music of our higher caliber.”

Chloe rolls her eyes. Before she gets into her mom’s car later, she gives both of them a quick hug. She hasn’t even had this conversation with herself yet; Chloe is impossibly grateful not to have to have it with her friends right now. But it feels good to know that Kevin and Tanner are in her corner—in music, in school, in friendship, and now in this part of her life. It’s is enough. This, right now, is good.

* * *

It pains her to admit it, but Chloe thinks that Suzanne Lewis was right. She’s at Skip Day with Tanner, and Kevin would be so out of place here. He would complain about the music and the beer and the juuling, and how vapid American teenagers are.

But she’s not here to think about Kevin. It’s 11:30 AM and she’s drinking vodka mixed with a combination of several sodas out of a red Solo cup and leaning against Tanner on the floor. The Great American Challenge is going on in the other room, and they watched that for a while, but the teams have moved on to the sausage and jalapeño pizza stage, and Chloe doesn’t have the stomach to watch. It’s nice to be somewhere quiet anyway. Or, quiet _ er _ ; rap music is still blasting from someone’s portable speaker in the corner. 

It’s early, but the owners of the Airbnb have put up tinsel on the mantel. It glints in the weak sunlight coming in through the window, and Chloe is viscerally reminded of holiday parties at her dad’s office when she was a kid. She and Jenna would run in socked feet over the carpet of the big conference room, playing hide and seek among the adults and eating enough Christmas cookies to turn their tongues red and green.

Tanner elbows her gently, and she comes back. “You wanna play?”

Riley Gossinger is shuffling a deck of cards. Kings. She’s here to get lit and have fun with her friends, not get all moody about childhood memories of a girl who thinks she’s too cool to even be here. Chloe nods, and the game begins.

“Six, chicks!” Riley says, holding up the six of hearts. “Ladies drink.” Chloe clinks glasses with Suzanne and Lily, the starting point guard on the basketball team, before taking a sip of her drink.

Suzanne draws the queen of diamonds. She turns immediately to her left to start the questions, adopting a valley girl voice to ask Riley, “What’s your damage?”

Riley keeps her poker face and turns to Chloe. “What is the meaning of life?”

“What’s… what’s the capital of Zimbabwe?”

“Are you the Turd Burglar?” Lily asks Tanner, eyes wide and serious, and then that’s it—they all burst into laughter, and Tanner drinks. He holds out his free hand in invitation, and Chloe moves over on the floor so Tanner can slide his arm around her shoulders. They’ve always been touchy-feely as friends, but Chloe’s starting to think lately that it’s verging on something else. She loves being around Tanner, but she can’t make a move until she’s sure it’s what he wants. He means too much to her for this to go badly. The  _ ooh _ s from the circle aren’t exactly helping.

A few rounds pass: Lily is the last to touch the floor; she drinks. Suzanne gets a ten and chooses apostles as the category; it comes back around the circle to her and the best she can come up with is “Jesus Christ!” She drinks. There’s an ace, a three, a five.

On her turn, Chloe draws the eight of spades. “Eight, pick a mate to drink with!” Riley says, which is annoying and, honestly, typical. Like, they all know the rules already. But Chloe just rolls her eyes and pokes Tanner on the nose with her card, choosing him. It’s something that she would never normally do, but today it feels like a good idea. Tanner laughs.

Then Tanner goes and draws the first king. He pours a good amount of his beer into the King’s cup and thinks for a moment before announcing his rule. “Drink for every odd numbered card.”

The game goes on until Riley draws the last king. She takes a whiff of what’s in the cup and grimaces, but to her credit she drinks it in one go.

“Let’s go outside,” Chloe says. Some people are talking about playing another game, but the room is suddenly claustrophobic. Too loud and too hot and too full of people that aren’t Tanner. Chloe takes him by the hand—he  _ lets _ her take him by the hand—and she pulls him outside.

Chloe takes this opportunity to check her Snapchat. She specifically blocked her younger cousins from seeing her story for the occasion, and it has not gone to waste. A lot of people have already viewed the videos of the Great American Challenge she posted, and the one of her blowing smoke rings with Suzanne’s juul.

“Hey, uh, Chloe,” Tanner says. He sounds serious enough that she puts away her phone. “I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I think I’m… Not I think. I  _ am _ .” Tanner waits for her to meet his eyes. “I’m bisexual.”

Chloe laughs. She can’t help it. She was bracing for something awful—moving to Florida, dying of cancer, considering getting an eyebrow piercing—so bisexuality is mercifully underwhelming.

Except, Tanner isn’t laughing. He frowns and turns away from her. “I thought you would understand,” he says.

Chloe squeezes his shoulder, pulling him gently back to face her. “I do, it’s just. Me too.”

“Oh,” Tanner says, relaxing. “Cool.”

“I didn’t mean to steal your big coming out moment or anything, I just—”

Tanner kisses her. It was about time.

* * *

Shit starts to go down, literally. Chloe’s life and guest house become dedicated to solving the mystery of the Turd Burglar, and she isn’t on speaking terms with one of her best friends. Her mom is working overtime at the hospital this week covering for a neurosurgeon out with the flu, so all told, it’s safe to say things for the Lyman household are pretty hectic. Chloe doesn’t even think to take down the menorah until the last night of Hanukkah.

She holds it in her hands now, picking wax off the base with her thumbnail. It’s awfully sad to do this alone, but there does happen to be another two high schoolers living within walking distance. Chloe packs a few things into her bag and goes over to the guest house.

It’s about 4 in the afternoon and Sam answers the door in his pajamas, which is a move Chloe can respect. “Oh, fuck, I forgot about Hanukkah,” he says in lieu of a greeting, looking sheepishly at the menorah in Chloe’s hand.

“I almost did too. Catholic school, shit crimes, it’ll do that to you.”

“I didn’t know you were Jewish,” Sam says.

“My mom is,” Chloe explains. “And I have the Manischewitz to prove it!” She holds up her bag, and the bottles clink pleasantly inside.

“In that case, come right in,” Sam says, bowing and holding the door for her in mock formality. “Shabbat Shalom.”

“It’s not Shabbat.”

“Tuesday Shalom.”

Chloe laughs and follows him to the kitchen, where Peter is frowning at his laptop. Sam walks over and closes the computer.

“Hey!” Peter says. “I was editing.”

“You’re always editing. We’ve got company, babe.”

Chloe waves. Peter halfheartedly puts up a fight about losing editing time, but with the promise of fried food and disgustingly sweet wine, he relents. Chloe takes out several potatoes from her bag, and they get to work making latkes.

“So how’s the investigation going?” Chloe says, pressing the moisture out of some potatoes with a dish towel. “Any new leads?”

“We’ve been looking into Jenna Hawthorne,” Peter says. “The students we interviewed said people turned on her after the Kendall Jenner picture, but that doesn’t seem like enough. There has to be more.”

There’s an unspoken understanding between the three of them of what that  _ something more _ is. It’s hard to be the only out lesbian at a conservative Catholic school. On the other side of her comfortable bisexuality, Chloe wants to reach out to Jenna. If not to be her friend again, at least to tell her that she’s not alone. But they’re sixteen now. It would be too little too late.

“We used to be friends when we were kids,” she says. Chloe never talks about Jenna with Kevin and Tanner, has never really told anyone the whole story, but she feels weirdly at ease with Peter and Sam. “Jenna hates pretty much everyone at school, but I don’t think she would do something like this.”

She tells them the whole story, and even though it might make for scintillating television, Chloe’s almost positive that none of this will make it into the doc. Maybe she shouldn’t be so trusting of Peter and Sam, but she finds that she is. 

“And we really haven’t talked since then,” she finishes. “I feel terrible about it.”

“That’s really— Ow!” Chloe turns around to see Peter wince and shake out his fingers. He glares at the box grater. “Shit.”

Sam tsks and shakes his head, but he stops his own work to examine Peter’s bleeding knuckles.

“A little blood is the secret ingredient,” Chloe says, opening the cabinet to get him a band-aid. “It’s the spice of life.”

Sam accepts it from her and takes great care bandaging Peter’s finger. “This is God’s punishment for missing the first seven nights,” he says solemnly. “My boyfriend practically loses a finger.”

“Just a flesh wound,” Peter insists.

“That’s what the Black Knight said too,” Sam points out, crumpling up the band-aid wrapper.

“Yeah I kinda walked into that one.”

“At least you  _ can _ walk, unlike—”

“The Black Knight, yes I get it!”

Sam looks very satisfied with himself.

“I think that’s enough potatoes anyway,” Chloe says.

They take a break before heating up the oil to light the menorah. Peter lights the _shamash_ and hands it to Chloe, and she lights the rest of the candles and says the prayer. Sam takes a picture of the two of them.

“This is definitely going on the Vandal insta,” he says, leaning over Peter to show it to him. Chloe can’t help but be jealous of their casual intimacy. She’s big enough to admit that she had a thing for Peter when they first met, but now that she knows he’s with Sam it’s different. It’s just nice to be around other gay people.

Sam also gets Chloe’s permission before posting. It’s a cute photo, and the caption reads:  _ the #investigation stops for no one but the big man himself  _ _ 🙏 #happyhanukkah _ .

Half an hour later, they finally sit down to dinner. The whole house smells like oil and Sam insists on eating his latkes with (gasp!) ketchup, but it’s really nice.

“I did this with Tanner and Kevin last year...” Chloe trails off, spooning applesauce onto her plate. She doesn’t finish the thought: but Kevin is on house arrest and she’s not exactly on speaking terms with Tanner.

“It’s fucked that Tanner went to the cops like that,” Sam says.

“Is it though?” Peter says. “If you knew I was responsible for terrorizing our school with shit, would you turn me in?”

Sam considers for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“Except that he didn’t know Kevin was responsible,” Chloe says. “He was just pissed ‘cause of Skip Day. Another thing he didn’t know Kevin was responsible for.” How could Tanner have put whatever chance he had with her above his friendship with Kevin? How could he think she would be okay with that? That with Kevin  _ out of the way _ , they could be together?

“That’s true,” Peter says.

“And he just texted me the next day to hang out, like nothing had happened. I can’t believe he thought I would just betray Kevin like that.”

It’s a conversation they’ve had before, and one they’ll probably have again before the end of the doc. They all shake their heads in disapproval and continue getting buzzed on Manischewitz.

Chloe hates that she’s not here with Tanner and Kevin, hates that she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to trust Tanner again. The thing is, it would have been so easy to just go along with Tanner after he went to the police. They could have picked up right where they left off on Skip Day, could be going on cutesy dates and posting photos online together while Kevin sits at home with his ankle bracelet and his grandma.

But Chloe didn’t, and she doesn’t regret it one bit. She isn’t going to quit on Kevin just because it’s hard. She’s not going to let him go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and she’s not going to fuck up another friendship.

* * *

Weeks later, Tanner meets Chloe in the parking lot after choir practice. He doesn’t immediately start talking, but waits for her to direct the conversation. Chloe’s grateful. She wants to do this right.

“Kevin told me about the Darjeeling White.”

“Does he like it?” Chloe hears the unspoken questions too:  _ Does he forgive me? Do you? _

“I think so,” she says deliberately. Tanner nods and relaxes visibly, and with that they’re actually talking about tea. “He used the word ‘muscatel’ about ten times on the phone.”

“Of course he did,” Tanner says, in the same fond tone Chloe’s mother reserves for the cat when he’s knocked over a glass of water.

“If it’s muscatel, it’s muscatel.”

“Must-catel be.”

Chloe hits Tanner on the arm for that truly awful pun, and then they’re back to being friends. She hasn’t completely forgiven him for what he did to Kevin; she’s not sure if it’s even something forgivable, but it’s clear how much he regrets it, and that he’s trying to make things right.

They talk for a while longer, just catching up on school and choir and jazz band—Tanner has a saxophone solo in the spring concert. It’s getting dark outside, and Chloe has to get home.

For the first time in a long time, it feels like they’re on the same page again. Chloe can tell Tanner wants to talk about what happened on Skip Day, and she does too, but they both know it needs time. That fixing things between the three of them has to be the first order of business, before anything moves forward between Chloe and Tanner. That’s a conversation for another day.

She gets out her car keys, and then wraps Tanner in a tight hug. It’s good to have him back.

* * *

In the hall between classes, Chloe catches up with Jenna. She takes her by the wrist and waits for Jenna’s brief nod before pulling her aside to the wall. Chloe knows she needs to do this, but now that she’s here, it takes her a moment to find the words.

“I have to get to gym in an hour, so…” Jenna looks down at her nails, feigning boredom, but Chloe can tell underneath it that she’s genuinely curious. After all this time, she can still read her.

“I'm sorry,” Chloe finally says.

“For what happened with The Dump? Don’t be.”

“Not for what happened with The Dump. Although I am sorry for that. For what happened when we were kids.”

“Don’t be,” Jenna says again, but her voice is softer.

Jenna’s dating someone new now, a girl from another school. Chloe’s with Tanner now, but even if she weren’t, she isn’t jealous. She missed her chance to be with Jenna a long time ago, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be friends again.

“We should get coffee sometime,” Jenna says.

Chloe’s said the same thing to dozens of people she has no intention of ever seeing again, but Jenna sounds sincere. Like she really wants to give this a chance. Chloe's tied up a lot of the loose ends in her life—with Tanner and Kevin, the Turd Burglar, even her sexuality—but she never quite got closure with Jenna. Not until now. She wants to give it a chance, too.

“We should.”


End file.
